


Honor in Silence

by lj-writes (lunafana)



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Bikini scene, Freeze peach!, Gen, Leia has mental health issues, Poe is an honorable paladin and i love him, Porn critical depending on how you look at it, Pre-The Force Awakens, References to Return of the Jedi, objectification of women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:40:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunafana/pseuds/lj-writes
Summary: Shortly after joining the Resistance, Poe Dameron gets into a fistfight and has nothing to say for himself. Leia works out the mystery.





	Honor in Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr, reposted here with slight edits mostly to match Poe's rank to Before the Awakening canon. Thanks to attackfish for help with the naming!

If you play-act at butchery long enough  
You grow used to the sounds of the screaming.  
\- Brenna Twohy, _Fantastic Breasts and Where to Find Them_

* * *

The office door opened to admit Leia just in time for her to hear a raised voice.

“Tell the Colonel, Chardon. Tell him what-“

Two young men standing at attention before Colonel Solh’s desk turned at her entrance, and she recognized Shara’s son Poe on sight. His mouth hung open mid-sentence and he saluted in reflex before dropping his gaze, as though ashamed. 

As for the man next to him, Ty Chardon in Green Squadron as she recalled, _curdled_ was the word that came to mind at the way his pale face turned even paler at the sight of her and the trace of a smile twisted into blank horror. She supposed it was a useful skill to inspire outright terror in men, but in this case she had no idea what brought this on.

“Is this a bad time?” She raised a disk of logistics reports she had hoped to go over with the Colonel. “I can come back later.”

“No no, please come in. I will be done with these two shortly.” Solh’s dark eyes glared out at the two young men over his hawk nose. “Perhaps you can help me deal with these miscreants.”

It was then that she noticed the signs of a fistfight on Poe and Chardon, the beginning of a swelling bruise on Poe’s eye, Chardon’s cut lip and the blood on his clothes.

“All right, what happened?” She stepped into the office letting the door swish shut behind her, and crossed her arms so she could not act on her urge to take both boys—men, she corrected herself, decorated pilots and officers—by an ear.

“You were saying, Dameron?” Solh turned to Poe.

“Nothing, sir.” The young man threw back his shoulders and straightened his spine. His eyes were fixed on Solh but Leia had the strange feeling his attention was on her. Was that sweat beading on his forehead? “My conduct was unbecoming of an officer and I take full responsibility.“

Leia knew the Colonel well enough to tell he was confused behind his command scowl. So was she; Poe had seemed ready to explain everything, or to make Chardon explain, at the moment she entered. Why this about-face?

“Chardon?” Solh looked to the other pilot.

“Dameron punched me, sir, and I defended myself.” Chardon sounded smug, but his neck was rigid with tension and he actually looked sideways at Leia for a moment. “Multiple witnesses can confirm this.”

“Do you deny his account, Dameron?” asked Solh.

“No, sir.”

“Can you explain why you assaulted a fellow pilot?” 

Poe was silent for a moment, and his gaze also was drawn to Leia before he withdrew it. “No. No, sir.”

“Are you telling me,” Solh came out from behind his desk to get into Poe’s space, “that you attacked a fellow officer for no reason at all? You realize this is a serious charge.”

“Yes, sir.” Poe’s chin dropped in dejection.

“Am I going to have to write you up for assault, Dameron?” The Colonel was almost pleading now and Leia found herself pleading silently with him. There had to be a reason, if not a justification. Her old friend’s boy was not some bully who would be randomly violent to his comrades. Poe would never-

_There must be some mistake. I know my son, Ben would never-_

She edged back from that familiar abyss with teeth clenched and heart pounding, and turned her attention back just in time to catch Solh letting out a breath and giving her a look that said, simply, ‘help me.’ Whatever Poe’s answer had been it was not to the Colonel’s satisfaction. 

Checking her surroundings as she did after falling down one of the trapdoors in her mind, she saw Poe slip something into a pocket.

“What’s that?”

He froze for a moment before visibly making himself relax. “What do you mean, General?“

“The object you just put in your pocket. It looked like a mini holocron projector.”

Poe’s shoulders bunched up and he took a step back from her as though afraid. “It’s nothing, ma’am.”

“Let’s see it.” She strode toward him, holding out a hand. She was beginning to get an idea of what this was all about, though she hoped she was wrong.

“No!” 

Leia stopped in her tracks. If she had any doubts about her conclusion, his panicked tone had dispelled it.

“Lieutenant Chardon.” She met the other young man’s eyes. “Commander Dameron did not attack you unprovoked, did he. He had a reason.”

“Does that justify attacking a fellow officer?” Chardon dabbed at the cut on his lip with a knuckle, looking down at her. Was she imagining a faint note of insolence in his voice? 

“No, it doesn’t. But perhaps we could check the contents of that holocron to see if the Colonel might understand Commander Dameron’s reasons.” She looked up at Chardon. “It is yours, isn’t it?”

Chardon looked away. “It’s just a stupid guy thing, ma’am.”

“Then you stand by your story that Commander Dameron attacked you unprovoked? You won’t mind if we look at the holocron, then.“

“Please, General.” Poe rubbed his forehead with a hand before dragging it through his hair. “I can spend a night or two in the brig. The Colonel can put it on my record. Just don’t…”

“That is for Colonel Solh to decide. Isn’t it, Colonel?“

“Hand it over, Dameron.” Solh held out a hand.

Poe obeyed, looking miserable. “General, could you at least leave the room while we play it?”

“I’ll be right here.” She needed to look, or her imagination would make it worse than it really was. That was how she had always dealt with the monsters under her bed.

Solh put the projector on his desk and activated it. The image of a young woman, familiar to Leia as a younger version of herself though much augmented in some characteristics, popped up in the air above it, dressed in a metallic bikini.

It was really a well-made holocron, she thought, crafted in loving if lurid detail. Some parts, of course, were not strictly true to life, such as the sexy moans the image would emit when the a chain attached to a collar around her neck was yanked by an unseen hand. Someone had put a lot of care into recreating that ugly scene from her life.

A long and loud moan, accompanied by a wiggling of the ample hips and breasts, was cut short when Solh switched off the holocron. “I think we’ve seen enough.” 

Leia had a feeling everyone in the room shared that sentiment. None of the men would look at her.

She let out a breath. “Let’s take this from the top. Commander Dameron, you saw Lieutenant Chardon play this… image in his room?”

“With a group of his friends, yes.” Poe stared down at the floor, flushed to the neck. She felt like putting an arm around him and telling him it would be all right, the way she wished someone would for her. “They were a little loud about it.“

She could imagine, though she didn’t want to. She wanted to believe better of the people who were risking their lives for the cause they all shared, but she had run into too many of these images of herself and other women. And those were just the instances she knew about.

“He confronted you about it, Chardon?” Solh’s continuation of the questioning covered up her own silence, and she was grateful to him for it.

“Sir, he wanted me to destroy it and said he’d take it from me when I refused. I said he had no right and he'd have to report me."

Leia shook her head. Of course Poe didn't want to explain the contents of the holocron up the chain of command, and he knew regulations were not on his side in any case.

"Things escalated, he threw the first punch and made good on his threat.”

“I see.” Solh looked at Chardon for a long moment.

“I thought we believed in freedom of expression and all the other freedoms, sir,” Chardon burst out. “We’ve all put our lives on the line to fight the guys who think it’s fine to kill people for what they say and like to look at-“

“Did you just compare me to the First Order?” Poe turned to Chardon.

“Enough.” Leia picked up the holocron projector and held it out to Chardon. “Lieutenant, here is your property back.” 

He glared at it without taking it. “It’s stupid and juvenile, General, but I thought our freedoms protected that.”

“They do. You have every right to own this and look at it. I just want you to know what it is you’re consuming.” She put the projector back down on the desk with a click.

“The girl that holocron was based on was forced by a murderous crime lord and slaver to put on that outfit. She feared for her life and the lives of her friends if she resisted.” She swallowed at the memory of Han crumpling down from his icy imprisonment, shivering and blind. Was the coldness of space he now wandered any less of a prison? “She was forced to sit submissively by his seat while he and his nightmare court ogled her like a piece of meat. He would pull her leash from time to time just to torment her, and to remind her she was his property, no more than a thing. And while this was just a few hours of her life, there were other women in that place who had endured that treatment and worse for years, a lifetime, before some of them were murdered for his entertainment.“

She leaned in close to Chardon, taking satisfaction from the way he leaned away. “And when the moment came she took that same length of chain and wrapped it around the slaver’s neck. She pulled and kept pulling with more strength than she thought she had in her, until she cut off his breath and he never moved again. She neither noticed nor cared that the links on the chain tore her hands to ribbons. She knew she had made sure he could never hurt anyone again.”

She relaxed back against Solh’s desk, feeling lighter for unburdening herself from that decades-ago story. She rubbed her fingers together, feeling again the numbness in those bruised and bleeding hands, Luke’s hands taking them in his own and Han’s lips pressed against bandaged fingers.

“I won’t stop you from looking at this imagery, Lieutenant Chardon. I just want you to do so knowing what it means. Colonel Solh, will you be making your decision now?“

Solh shook himself and straightened. “Commander Dameron, you’ll be staying tonight at the brig for the assault of a fellow officer. Though I highly,“ he glared at Chardon, “highly sympathize with your reasons, they do not justify violence. There will be no permanent mark on your record.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Poe stood to attention. 

“As for you.” Solh went to stand before Chardon. “If you were a young one in my tribe back home I would have slapped you across the face and made you pay reparations out of your herd. As it is, I must confine myself to noting that I am severely disappointed in you and deplore your cowardice in hiding behind Dameron’s sense of honor. I hope you can redeem yourself, but at this point that will take quite a bit of doing. Now get out of my sight.”

“Yes, sir.” Chardon saluted, his face set.

“Oh, and you can have this thing back if you want it.” The Colonel lifted the projector.

“No, sir. That’s fine, sir.” 

“Good.” Solh threw the projector against a wall with a force that broke the casing and sent up sparks. "Dismissed." 

Chardon all but flew through the door as it opened for him.

No one spoke for a moment after the door closed, while the projector spat more sparks and garbled bits of image as it died. At last Leia remembered her original purpose in coming here.

“So, what about those logistics reports?”

“Of course.” Solh turned to Poe. “You are also dismissed.“

“Sir.”

“Go take your mess before you report to the brig.” The Colonel gave him a pat on a shoulder, with what Leia could swear was pride shining in his eyes. “I cannot commend your actions, but I will say I admire an honorable man better than one who follows the letter of the law and nothing more.”

“Colonel.” Poe turned to her to give a smart salute. “General.“

“Poe.” She couldn’t help but smile at him. “Thank you.”

He looked away. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.” 

“It’s not your fault.” On impulse she reached out and gave him a pat on the cheek. “You truly are your mother’s son.“

The light that came into his face warmed parts of her that she had not realized needed it.

The Colonel shook his head after Poe left. “That kid. He’s my best pilot, but headstrong as an Andorian bull. I don’t know what to do with him.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Leia inserted the data disk into a receptacle by his desk and sat down, gesturing for him to sit as well. “He's a good young man,” she said, and ignored the familiar pang of memory.

She pointed out the parts of the report she had questions about and they discussed it as afternoon turned to evening, the broken holocron projector lying forgotten in a corner while they set about facing the menace that waited out in the dark of space.


End file.
